"Never could I have anticipated . . . a black man being at the top of the ticket"

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The Innocents at Home

In central Montana, one of the least racially diverse areas in the United States, residents grapple with the idea of voting for a black man.

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"In a small town," says Kay Mathison, 64, of Lewistown, "people want things like they were 50 years ago." More words of a certain kind of innocence and complexity.

A Land of Buttes and Vistas

To get to Lewistown (population 6,000), you drive 125 miles along U.S. 87 north from Billings, along rolling roads that vanish into knuckle-hard beige mountains. The sky swirls in the distance, the sun glinting off a sky-blue plate of Melmac china. This is the landscape that so fascinated painter Charles Russell, his images of cowboys and buffaloes frozen in a handsome beauty from his brush strokes.

Mary Weaver is about to sit down for breakfast at McDonald's. She's 56 and works compiling medical records. She says she is curious about black people but is reduced to learning about them from TV and movies. "I'm probably more afraid of black men because of the movies," she says, reeling off examples of robbers, criminals and gang members. "It gives me the chills. I do make exceptions, though. If the black man is handsome, I tend not to think so badly about him. But just take the rappers in the movies. They's so angry. They've got these gangs. I know that's not all black people, but . . ." She trails off. She picks back up: "I had a nephew, though, in a gang once. Of course, he's white."

She admits she has never had a black friend, or held a long conversation with a black person.

"I haven't made up my mind about the election," she says.

Bonnie Foley, 68, who works in a Lewistown clothing store (she's putting out a new batch of heavy wool blankets on a recent morning), is grappling with her feelings about the election. "I hate to admit it, but I think, deep down, I might be prejudiced," she says.

Sometimes, it's just the unknowing about black life that bewilders her.

In her youth, she traveled in and out of some major cities in California and Washington state. "There was such poverty, and areas where there were black gangs," she says. Returning home more than three decades ago, her insight about blacks came mainly from TV. "I feel about blacks the way I often feel about Indians. The Indians that make themselves noticeable are the ones you come into contact with because of their drunkenness. It's the same way with black people -- the ones I'd come into contact with in the past were like that. And the ones you see on TV are silly and stupid on these sitcoms. I don't think -- I don't think-- black people really act like that."

She adds: "I met a black gal once in Missoula. She asked me to go hear a talk with her one day. I liked her a lot. But what I'm trying to say is that I haven't come into contact with a lot of 'normal' blacks."

She lives up in the mountains with her dog. Sometimes mountain lions are a worry, but the dog chases them away. "They don't like the barking," she says.

She goes on: "Now, my nephew married two black women, one right after the other, up in Seattle," she says. "Of course my family didn't go along with it."

'Very Idealized' Views

"There is one black man here," says Brenda Douglass of Lewistown. "You know about them. When they move in, bam, you know. He works at Pamida," a department store on the edge of town.